Peachy Business Forms Ltd.

Peachy Business Forms Ltd. is proud to express its overall satisfaction with the system that the dHACs Software group has produced. Not only has it met our office needs of maintaining our many saleperson's routing schedules, but the system presented affords us a degree of comfort and ease in a reasonably safe and confidential security system. The system shall also aid our plight in the business form industry with keeping accurate records of our ever-growing number of products and customers. The following document is an attempt to develop a meaningful forum in which the many facets of this new system can be assessed and critiqued. It will touch upon the system's strengths and weaknesses from the Peachy Business Form perspective.

A major weakness in the system found by many of our employees, was the apparent lack of an actual sales routing system. It did not seem to focus on or support an actual customer route list. The routing which we had envisioned as being the central part to our system was instead a small component of the system produced by dHACs. Ideally, we would have liked to have had the customers on each list organized according to their respective addresses. Yet, from what was presented to us the list appeared to be a composite of customer listings only generated according to which salesperson they are routinely visited by. This absence of any true organizing algorithm for the routing lists was viewed as a considerable shortcoming of the system demonstrated by the dHACS Software group.

Another downfall regarding more specifically the final presentation of the software, was the system's lack of overall functionality. It was nice to see the basic workings of adding, deleting and modifying customers and products which gives the peachy group hope that the final product will eventually attain the standards we have expected, but the omission of such functions as searching and true route list scheduling also caused us to have some concern. Granted this was merely a prototype and our expectations might have been slightly lofty, but it would have been ideal to at least have seen how the functionality of such things as searching might have been performed within the context of the larger system.

Perhaps one of the most overwhelming strengths of the entire system developed was what was referred to as a 'modeless' interface. The overall interface layout was seen by many peachy members as being 'handy' and efficient with its common buttons being conveniently placed on the left of the screen and accessible at all times. This will greatly increase the efficiency within our business setting as we anticipate it will be easy and quick to manipulate much of the various data which a business like ours involves. What does become readily apparent upon short inspection of the dHACs route scheduling system is the high degree of thought and consideration that went into designing the interface; for which we are truly appreciative.

Security was also adaquetely demonstrated by the dHACs group in its presentation. The ability to have the system differentiate between both managers and salespersons and selectively allow access to and manipulation of data will prove to be an invaluable asset to Peachy Business Forms. Now data can be entered and viewed without the worry of undesirable persons gaining access to it and maliciously altering or destroying its contents. With this part of the system being implemented, a high degree of confidence in our business practices and our data keeping can finally be realized and continued in the many years to come.

The project provided by dHACs filled most of the requirements specified by the group. However, since the program was being developed for us the dHACs group should have heeded our minor objection to the screen colours chosen. The texture of the interface was very agreeable with its classic marble motif, but the coloring was seen to be a source of distraction. In fact, a few of our managers expressed a desire for coffee after seeing the screen layouts of the system (this could be a cause for concern as it could indirectly increase the number of coffee breaks our employees already have an extreme fondness for taking). Although this is becoming a bit overly critical, we feel that because it is our system, and in also considering that we will be working with it on a constant day after day basis, this unfulfilled request was a slight oversight on behalf of dHACs. Perhaps our dislike for the interface color scheme was not voiced clearly or loudly enough and for this reason it went unnoticed. If so, this could be a symptom attributed to the communication problems the two groups experienced which is addressed in the paragraph that follows.

The use of the Web to connect the two groups was a definite asset, but if lacked the intimate face-to-face contact necessary in understanding and explaining comments. Much of the time, the communication vital to furthering and deepening the project's progress was unavoidably abbreviated because of time restrictions. This in itself somewhat hampered the project envisioned by Peachy Business Forms Ltd. since the time for conveyance of our ideas and opinions was limited in this unfortunate regard. For this simple reason, more time should be allocated for discussion between the customer and supplier groups so as to ensure the specifications are agreed upon and understood by both sides, and that further valuable viewpoints can be generated. In addition, the final deadlines for our customer responses were also too constrained. This was also a contributing factor in the process of assessment and synthesis of the current dHACs project state as it hastened our responses to the system, hence sometimes causing our group to unintentionally overlook signifcant project details. As a direct result, the dHACs group undeservedly suffered in not receiving customer feedback which might have altered the system's complexion on the whole. In hindsight, at least two days are required to organize a writeup in a group where half the people are preparing for their supplier presentations and the other half are working on other course studies.

Another minor point which can probably also be linked to the limited communication which the two groups were able to engage in, also had to do with the end result of the user interface. Aside from the already mentioned aversion to the color of the interface layout, a more subtle problem was noticed by many of the salespersons who will be concerned with their daily routes. This being, the seeming lack of a current day on the interface. Although once again this can be considered a very minor system flaw, we feel that our salespeople and scheduling supervisors should at a glance be able to determine the day they are scheduling for, or have been scheduled for. A simple 'daily route list' box does not provide enough information as to the specific day that daily route list is being generated for. Once again, it should be stressed that this is not truly indicative of the poor system design techniques employed by those at dHACs, but instead an unfortunate symptom of the unavoidable lack of interaction and communication between the two groups.

Since much of the document has focused on matters of poor communication between the two groups and the adverse effect this has had on the project as a whole, it is only natural to make the suggestion that a development process which nurtured a mutual partnership would have positively effected the project's outcome. With a higher degree of partnership between both the customer and supplier group it would be hoped that a software product true to that envisioned by the customer could be created. As it stands now, this is not feasible with customer groups also having to supply a product of their own ... but maybe in the future.

On a whole, the design process that was implemented through this course was excellent in what it hoped to accomplish, but we feel that it's effectiveness was heeded by the lack of time that the students had available to concentrate on the intricacies if it. We feel that more time should be alotted during the scheduled labs for face to face meetings between customer and supplier, as described earlier, so these dialogs may assist the design of the final project and alleviate the wasted time of simple e-mail bickering that can sometimes result as problems are trying to be solved.

Finally, we feel that the process was a useful tool for us as students to get a handle on the kinds of methods we have available to us when we enter into the workforce and are required to design programs of our own. As well, the experience we gained working in our rather sizable groups will be an asset when we are placed once again in the many situations in our lives where working with others will be neccessary. We would like to thank the entire class, the helpful teaching assistants, and of course Dr. Kremer for the experience we have gained and we look forward to when we, as productive members of the computing society, get to apply ourselves to the tasks ahead in the next generation.